Fix: Text Messages, Automated Emails and Checkout Options

Over the past couple of weeks, some unexpected workflows were occurring with text messages, automated emails, and checkout design. These were intermittent and caused some text message campaigns to send to consumers multiple times, a few automated emails failing to fire and the inability for a handful of clients to update their header and footer within the current checkout tools.

Our team investigated and updated credentials with our authentication and authorization platform, Auth0. You can now continue to run text message campaigns, queue up action emails and know your transactional emails will hit your consumer as expected. You can also update your checkout design using the latest checkout tools.

Thanks for reporting these instances so our team could quickly identify and implement a fix. We look forward to supporting you in connecting with your consumers during OND and beyond.

Now: Invalid Certificate Message

Last week, we received a few reports from wineries that their consumers got a 'not secure' message while shopping on their winery's website. WineDirect did a thorough investigation with our primary certification provider - ‘Let’s Encrypt’ to identify the reason behind the invalid SSL certificate.

The investigation determined that the websites reported were, in fact, secure. We are now aware that consumers using older computers with outdated browsers are sometimes served this message because the older browsers do not support the latest security standards allowing verification of a secure website.

This message is not being mandated by WineDirect, but by our SSL certificate issuer - which you can learn more about here. The requirement for minimum OS versions are part of better serving the internet community with higher security standards. If a consumer tells you they are getting this message, simply ask them to update their browser using these steps.

WineDirect remains laser-focused on security and providing the most secure online shopping experience for you and your consumers - especially during the busy holiday shopping season.

Failed Payment Transactions: More Information

On September 29th, beginning at approximately 1pm, users reported transactions declining intermittently with associated payment decline messages of "Connection Error" and "Server Temporarily unavailable."  Our engineers identified the issue as a brief outage by USAePay, followed by periods of intermittent unavailability. If your winery was impacted by this, we hope that the information below will help with reconciliation by identifying failed orders.

To quickly identify any orders that may have been affected by the "Connection Error" decline, navigate to the Reports section. Under the Financial tab, select the Payment Gateway report. Upon reaching the report builder page, assign the date range 9/28 - today's date, 2021. Manage filters to ensure all Order Statuses are selected, and Manage Report Columns to ensure the Order Number, Payment Date and Payment Gateway Transaction ID columns are included. The Payment Gateway Transaction ID column will indicate any orders that had the "Connection Error" decline, making these easy to identify.

For any orders that a) were not successful in a secondary attempt, or b) had a refund that declined or c) that you wish to capture payment now, we strongly encourage you to compare against your iAccess portal to confirm a first attempt was not successful. If you have any point of sale orders that include a tip and were only authorized but not captured due to this error, please reach out to our payments team to assist you by capturing these amounts through the payments portal directly. If no tips were included, you may attempt to capture the payment through the payment tab on the order directly, after you've confirmed the payment has not already been captured (via iAccess). 

Fix: Scheduled Reports

If your winery uses the schedule reports feature in new reports, you may have noticed that contacts were not receiving emails as expected. Our team has now fixed this bug and you can continue scheduling reports as you did previously, knowing your stakeholders will receive the reports once generated.

Thank you for your patience as our team investigated. Reports are a critical piece of your business operations, and we are thrilled to have them functioning optimally again.

Completed: Proactive Database Upgrade

In preparation for the busy sales season during OND, we proactively scheduled database maintenance to ensure the latest OS and security upgrades during August and early September. To minimize impact, these upgrades were made between 8:00pm and 1:00am PST every Wednesday evening.

This work has been completed successfully. As we head into the busy sales season, you can be confident in having the latest security patches, updates and upgrades supporting you as you grow your ecommerce sales. Wishing you a successful fall and holiday season!

Fix: Point of Sale Error

On August 21, beginning at approximately 1pm, we experienced an outage with some users reporting extreme delays or a fatal system error when trying to use the POS application. Our engineers identified and fixed the issue at 3:52pm.

Please verify through your gateway that payment was successfully captured for any orders with a pending payment and pending order status during this incident window. >>Click to view instructions here

Please note: If you've had to complete any payments manually, you’ll need to go to status and change to ‘completed’.

We will have a detailed Root Cause Analysis of the outage available within the next 5 days once we complete our internal analysis. We apologize for the disruption.

Fix: EMV Refund Flow

If your winery is U.S-based and uses the chip reader with WineDirect Payments, you may notice a change to your EMV refund workflow. We have removed the card-present refund option, aiming to improve both the staff and customer experience.

Previously, the refund flow assumed that a customer would be present in the tasting room for a refund, and the terminal prompted them to insert the card used in the original sale. We found that customers aren't usually physically in the Tasting Room during the refund process. By eliminating this unnecessary process and the additional clicks involved, the refund workflow is faster and reduces refund errors.

Fix: Same-Day Refunds on EMV Terminal

If your U.S.-based winery uses the EMV chip reader, you may have noticed same-day refunds were not being properly refunded in the Zeamster gateway. Our team has now fixed the error and you can now cancel the order in the Admin Panel (Status tab > Cancel Order > Process) to successfully change the status in the gateway (Zeamster) from ‘Approved’ to ‘Voided.’

Thanks for your patience as we continue to ensure smooth refunds for both your winery staff and customers.

Fix: XML Errors

If you encounter a blank XML or invalid XML error when calling Web Services, please retry your calls at later time. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we continue work in 2021 on platform stabilization improvements.

Fix: Checkout Completion for Some Australian Wineries

If your winery is located in Australia, you may have noticed your consumers experiencing intermittent errors when trying to purchase wine on your website. In some cases, consumers were hit with error messages upon submitting their web order, preventing them from completing the checkout process.

Our team identified the issue and worked tirelessly to fix it. Thank you for your patience.